5 Signs You’re Using Too Much Social Media in Your Job Search

It’s a sobering statistic: an astounding 93 percent of hiring managers will review a job candidate’s social media profile before making a decision on whether to hire him or not. Armed with this info, savvy job seekers should ensure that their social media profiles are clean and professional to pass the hiring manager. But there is such a thing as using too much social media in your job search.

While social media can be a fabulous tool when you’re job hunting, it needs to be used in moderation along with your arsenal of other job search tactics.

Think you might be addicted to social media when it comes to job hunting? Below are five signs that you’re using too much social media in your job search.

Love social media? Check out these signs that you might be using too much social media during your job search:

1. You’re compulsively checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

In your efforts to ramp up your job search—and get hired already—you’re spending more and more time on social media.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram—they’ve become your job search besties. Thing is, you’re on the sites all the time because you’re afraid of missing a single post, pic, or tweet.

In order to get the most out of your job search—and to stay sane—you should only go on social media as it relates to job searching a couple of times a day, max.

2. You’re on social media sites more than you’re applying for jobs.

You want to find a job—now. So you actively monitor your social media channels for any signs of potential jobs, networking opportunities, or job leads.

That’s all great and fine, but you might find that you’re spending more time surfing your social media accounts than you are actually applying for positions.

Make sure to balance your time better by applying for jobs as much as—or even more than—the amount of time you’re spending on social media.

3. You can’t stop tweaking your social media profiles.

As an ardent job seeker, you want to put your best foot forward, both in a real life job interview and also online.

As such, you find yourself incessantly playing with your social media profiles. You’re always updating your photos, making slight edits to your skills on LinkedIn, and obsessing over your last 140-character tweet on Twitter.

But all that tweaking and picking can actually hurt your chances of getting hired, because it can potentially appear that you’re trying to hide something—even if you’re not. So update your profiles…just not too often as to arouse suspicion.

4. You’re incessantly asking everyone for online recommendations.

You know how you feel when you get those generic LinkedIn emails from former coworkers asking you to give them a recommendation?

Now imagine you’re the one churning out those requests. While it’s always a good idea to have referrals that attest to your stellar work ethic and superior work performance, you don’t need to have dozens of recommendations to improve your online presence.

Pick out the top five or so that are the best, and file the rest.

5. You’re leaving too much of a social media trail.

You follow companies that you’re interested in working for—and tweet out to them on a daily basis. You like their posts on Facebook, and you’ll even repost some of their pictures on Instagram.

In short, you’re doing everything you can to show companies that you’d love to work for them—everything, that is, except staying off of social media.

The thing is, when you’re online too much (and leaving an obvious trail of likes, clicks, and tweets to prove it), a potential boss might get turned off and feel that you’re a.) on social media too much, and b.) being a little too eager, both of which can cast you in a negative light.

While there’s nothing wrong with being in contact with companies you’d like to work for online, be strategic with your comments, likes, and such. Sometimes a little can go a long way.

Having a social media strategy that works with the rest of your overall job search tactics is a great idea. Just make sure that you don’t get too social and let it overtake your job hunt!

Readers, have you been guilty of using too much social media as it relates to your job search? Let us know what happened in the comments below!